Straight renunciation of marriage for the kingdom of heaven, from a Protestant perspective

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The Double Standard Of Chastity

Why has chastity gone the way of virginity and became a locker room slur? I’ve discussed one of the reasons many times on my blog. Because biblical terminology has not been defended by the Christian community. Church people adopt secular language faster than Planned Parenthood can sell body parts. What’s remarkable about that is when women choose chastity in today’s vernacular soup they are actually defining its antitheses, slut and whore, because they don’t consider that the same choice is available to men. They don’t TALK or WRITE about it. That’s called a sin of omission. If they did, sexual equality would indeed be a reality. The status of women would be different. Instead, women writers cling to the double standard that says they are to protect their purity, but that men can never control their desires. How do they do that? It’s simple. By doing nothing. They decry being objects of men’s pleasure, but at the same time they embrace the sexual double standard that created it in the first place with their silence. How many times can you shoot yourself in the foot? It’s like the hitchhiker girl who gets picked up, raped, beaten up, thrown in the gutter – and comes around again to the same place the next day. They’ve given in to the idea that chastity comes easier for them than it does men. It seems that the highest standard women expect from men is for them not to be rapist. Imagine that. He can have sex with every prostitute in town as long as he doesn’t rape one. And he’s a saint. What an honor. Edmund Burke once said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” I would also add “say nothing.” The same is true for single women. While they have tried to make up their minds if a chaste man is more important than his money or job, they have sat idly by as virtuous men gave themselves up to the highest bidder.

From the time they read about Cinderella marrying Prince Charming, women are taught that the fairy godmother’s “be back before midnight rule” applies only to them – not men. If Cinderella “stays the night” the prince will know she’s “common.” If she doesn’t stay the night, he knows she’s royal. The glass slipper may be proof of Cinderella’s chastity. But what proof does Prince Charming have? All we can hope for is that she publically affirms his virtue. How many women do that today? In her book, Virgin: The Untouched History, Hanne Blank made these quite accurate observations:

“Virginity is also female. The male body has never commonly been labeled as being virginal even when it is, but rather as “continent” or “celibate”; even within the Catholic church, male renunciation of sex has been characterized as a matter of continence, not virginity. Additionally, virginity has never mattered in regard to the way men are valued, or whether they were considered fit to marry or, indeed, to be permitted to survive.”

Single ladies, no matter how uncomfortable or embarrassing it may be, I encourage you to make your standards known to the world. Include good men in your stories of purity who are just as chaste as you are. At least let them know they are valuable enough to survive. Chastity cannot exist in a vacuum. Can your expectations be upgraded from “I want a guy whose waiting on me” to “I want a guy whose waiting on marriage”? One simple change in wording and guys might see more of a reason to wait and your dating pool will double. Stop hiding behind your “I don’t want to be better than anybody else” mindset and tell the world what you really want. If people unfriend you and call you names, welcome to the world of living a Christian lifestyle. If you want to marry a guy who is also waiting on marriage, you will have to change centuries of stereotyping that says a man cannot be a virgin. In fact, you will have to change the definition of virginity in the dictionary. That will be harder than changing the course of a river. It won’t happen overnight. But as long as you continue to pat each other on the backs for being (fill in the blank) year-old virgin princesses and don’t hold the same standards for Prince Charmings and introduce them to the world, you will continue to be slut shamed, virgin shamed, whore shamed, and whatever else kind of shaming you can think of. Because as long as good men are devalued, you will be devalued. You will also continue to be raped, objectified, abused, and valued solely based on the status of your female parts. God made you with your reproductive status tied to your biological clocks. But he did not make your sexuality any more or any less important than men’s.